With the release and the success of the film screened a decade later, this moving 2007 novel by André Aciman about two young men falling in love in Northern Italy during the Summer of ‘83 found its way back to bookstores and to the hearts of new readers, mine included. Sometime after that, Aciman announced that Elio and Oliver’s story were to be continued in an upcoming sequel. The highly anticipated follow-up published this year was good, but not as moving as the first. The events that transpired within the 200-plus-long novel were all told in Call Me by Your Name. Thus making Find Me an unnecessary sequel that offered nothing new.
I read in an interview that Aciman wanted to tell the story of this book from Elio’s father, Samuel’s perspective, and he did. Equipped with the same languid, verbose prose, the entirety of Part One: Tempo was written from his point of view. He told the story of when he met Miranda, a spirited, fleeting young woman on the train. However, that was the only time we heard from Samuel. The latter parts were focused on Elio’s romance after Oliver and their eventual reunion. The introductory section then felt almost misplaced. Additionally, Miranda and Samuel’s part was simply the whole Call Me By Your Name book, but for the heterosexuals. Or Richard Linkman’s Before trilogy, but much hornier.
The second part, Cadenza, was narrated by Elio. It was refreshing to read his stream of consciousness and not encounter a hilarious, horny metaphor about apricot and a penis. Set 15 years later the events of the first book, Elio was then 31, almost 32, and was a successful pianist who held tours in Europe and in the US. While in Paris, he met Michel, a lawyer twice his age who became deeply infatuated with him. They spent weeks together making love and solving a case that was left unsolved.
For the first time, we saw Oliver’s perspective. It happened on Part 3: Capriccio. This happened five years after his reunion with Elio, told in the first book. Oliver was having a farewell partyーhe was going back to New Hampshire with his wife, Micol. During the party, he saw Elio when Paul, a guy he liked, played the same Bach music he played before in their summer house in Italy. This Arioso became his alarm to really wake from his twenty-year coma and go back to where his heart had never left. Which leave us with Part 4: Da Capo which was the fitting, predicted conclusion for Elio and Oliver.
This book is written for the fans. Nothing new was told, except from the first part which was, in a way, the same old story. Of course, they were bound to be together. It said so right at the end of the first book. I did enjoy reading about Elio, Oliver, Elio’s father, and the new characters, Michel in particular. I adore the two boys, most especially, and was joyous to hear what happened in-between and after, like a friend catching up. And Aciman did write beautifully. However, this expansion of what was succinctly and beautifully implied and left between the lines in Call Me by Your Name felt dragging, soulless, and ultimately gratuitous. Find Me can serve as an optional reading, a supplementing story, but not as a sequel. For it to qualify as one, it should aim to move the story further, to show something fresh, to create new events and conflicts that would challenge the characters. The novel was right on the verge of doing so, but did nothing of the sort.
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